The challenge
Northwind had strong products and loyal customers but a store built on a heavily-modified theme from 2019. Product pages took 6.2 seconds to load on mobile, checkout abandonment sat at 81%, and email accounted for just 6% of revenue. Paid spend was climbing while contribution margin quietly fell — the classic 'growing revenue, shrinking profit' trap.
What we did
Modelled the real unit economics
Before touching anything we built a contribution margin model across every SKU. It revealed that their best-selling product line was margin-negative after shipping and returns — and had been absorbing most of the ad budget.
Rebuilt on headless Shopify
A Next.js storefront on Shopify's Storefront API brought LCP from 6.2s to 0.6s. Product pages were restructured around objection handling, with fit guides, real customer photography, and inline reviews above the fold.
Ran 34 structured conversion tests
Fourteen won. The biggest single lift came from replacing a four-step checkout with a one-page express flow and adding delivery-date certainty at cart, which cut abandonment by 22 points.
Built the retention engine
Twelve Klaviyo flows plus SMS took email from 6% to 34% of total revenue. A replenishment flow for consumables alone now generates $1.9M annually with no incremental ad spend.
The result
Fourteen months in, Northwind passed $14M in annual revenue with contribution margin up 68%. Paid spend grew only 40% over the same window — the rest of the growth came from conversion rate, order value, and repeat purchases.
“We'd worked with three agencies who all wanted to spend more on ads. Digital Squad was the first to open our P&L and tell us our hero product was losing money. That conversation was uncomfortable and it changed the business.”